predeterminism, Calvinism

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[norman]

Greetings,
I know a couple people attending a church in Minneapolis. I found this site due to some statements and behavior I have seen with the people in question. To be clear, I am not a church member myself. After wondering about these things, I checked the church out on the internet.  I had no idea I would find the level of concern that I see in this forum.
I have not done an exhaustive search on this site but has anyone addressed the theme of predetermined salvation. That ones lifestyle seems to reflect whether someone is saved or not, that salvation can be determined pretty quickly, like in briefly talking to someone. And that if someone is not "saved" they are destined to hell and no one can do anything to change that. This person I know appears to have a cavalier attitude about "those unsaved" people, tends to see people as either "saved" or unsaved and even a sense that this person might be willing to take advantage of people they consider "unsaved".  Not to be dramatic or overstated, but this attitude is alarming to me and I'm wondering if its the person only or the organization and the person that has this attitude.  Has anyone out there heard such a doctrine from this church? 

[blonde]

From what I heard Mark Darling say is that he is not too much into John Piper.  I cannot cite an exact sermon from Darling, but Mark thinks his theology is well-refined and thought-out.  Mark in a way, disagrees with Piper, in the larger scheme of things.  Years ago I was surprized to see a fellow member (a guy named Paul Scott) at ECC taking a Piper book on a trip in a plane we were on.  Mary Knox likes Piper and cites his (Piper's) Twitter feeds on her Twitter feeds even now.  I wish Mary had some influences over Mark and Brent and open to Piper.  But I doubt that.

[MidnightRider]

norman,

I don't know anything about the Minneapolis church, but I can tell you that the GCx movement has always been opposed to Calvinism. The church's theology comes from the Plymouth Brethren denomination. If you google this site for Calvinism or predestination, you should be able to find some of the discussions we have had about it.

The beliefs you describe are not even Calvinist. Calvinists do not believe that the unsaved can never be saved. Everyone starts out as unsaved. The elect get saved, the non-elect don't. Knowing that someone is unsaved now does not tell you whether they might be saved in the future.

How to know if someone is saved _now_ is a separate issue. There are lots of non-Calvinists who think it is possible, even easy, to tell if someone is saved. I recall a man from my hometown (a member of a very non-Calvinist church) who said he could find out by asking one question. As for me, I was skeptical then and I remain so. People sometimes say one thing with their lips while believing something else with their heart.

Then you raise one more issue, i.e., that it might be acceptable to mistreat the unsaved. This is not Calvinism either. It sounds more like knuckleheadedness, but maybe your short description is missing something.